The conclusion I draw from what I hear and read is that some senior business execs haven't the slightest idea of what goes into their financial statements, what makes the firm's performance good or bad, or even what constitutes good or bad. At least four former leaders of multibillion dollar publicly held firms are claiming they didn't know what their financials meant, or words to that effect.
I don't know if that excuse will fly but I can, at least in a small way, understand their argument. I was blithely using TaxCut software the other day and when I finished, it told me I owed the Feds another $1,500! When I did the tax report with pencil and paper, I discovered why it came out that way but, using the software, I had no idea; the computer did the work. Do computers so completely separate results from the activities that produce them, that the managers of a firm can't connect the two?